Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur (книги онлайн без регистрации полностью .TXT) 📗

barbed wire that Castelani had strung, beat it down with their swords,

and were through.

Of those who breached the wire, most died on the very lips of the

Italian trenches, shot to bloody pieces by close range volleys of rifle

fire but a few, a very few came on still. A group of three figures

leaped the wire at a point where two dead Ethiopians had fallen and

dragged it down, making a breach for those who followed.

They were led by a tall, skeletal figure in swirling white robes.

He was bald, the pate of his head gleaming like a black cannon ball,

and perfect white teeth shone in the sweat-coiled face. He carried

only a sword, as long as the spread of a man's arms and as broad as the

span of his hand, and he swung the huge blade lightly about his head as

he j inked and dodged with the agility of a goat.

The two warriors who followed him carried ancient Martini-Henry rifles

which they fired from the hip as they ran, each shot blowing a long

thick blue flag of black powder smoke, while the leader swung the sword

above his head and loolooed a wild war cry. A machine gun picked up

the group neatly and a single burst cut two of them down but the tall

leader came on at a dead run.

The Count, peering over the turret of the tank, was so astonished by

the man's persistence that his own fear was momentarily forgotten.

In the tank parked beside his, the machine gun fired, a ripping tearing

burst, and this time the racing white clad figure staggered slightly

and Aldo Belli saw the bullets strike, lifting tiny pale puffs of dust

from the warrior's robes, and leaving bloody splotches across his chest

yet he came on running, still howling, and he leaped the first line of

trenches, coming straight down towards the line of tanks, and it seemed

as though he had recognized the Count as his particular adversary. His

charge seemed to be directed. at him alone, and he was suddenly very

close. Standing fascinated in the turret, Aldo Belli could clearly see

the staring eyes in the deeply lined face, and noticed the incongruity

of the man's rows of perfect white teeth. His chest was sodden with

dark red blood, but the swinging sword in his hands hissed through the

air and the dawn light flickered on the blade like summer lightning.

The machine gun fired again, and this time the burst seemed to tear the

man's body to pieces. The Count saw shreds of his clothing and flesh

fly from him in a cloud, yet incredibly he kept coming onwards,

staggering and dragging the sword beside him.

The last burst of fire struck him, and the sword dropped from his hand;

he sank to his knees, but kept crawling now he had seen the Count and

his eyes fastened on the white man's face. He tried to shout

something, but the sound was drowned in a bright flooding gout of blood

that filled his open mouth. The crawling, mutilated figure reached the

hull of the stationary tank, and the Italian almost as though in awe of

the man's tenacity. guns fell silent

Laboriously, the dying warrior dragged his broken body up towards the

Count, watching him with a terrible dying anger, and the Count fumbled

nervously with the ivory butt of the Beretta, slipping a fresh clip of

cartridges into the recessed butt.

"Stop him, you fools," he cried. "Kill him! Don't let him get in."

But the guns were silent.

With shaking hands, the Count slapped the magazine home and lifted the

pistol. At a range of six feet he sighted briefly into the crawling

Ethiopian.

He emptied the magazine of the Beretta in frantic haste, the shots

crashing out in rapid succession in the sudden silence that hung over

the field.

A bullet struck the warrior in the centre of his sweat-glazed forehead,

leaving a perfectly round black hole in the gleaming brown skin, and

the man slithered backwards and then rolled down the hull,

coming to rest at last upon his back, and he stared up at the swiftly

lightening sky with wide, unseeing eyes. Out between the slack lips

dropped a set of artificial teeth, and the old mouth collapsed and fell

inwards.

The Count was shaking still, but then quite unexpectedly a surging

emotion swept away the terrors that had gripped him. He felt a vast

proprietorial sense of emotional involvement with the man he had killed

he wanted to take some part of him, some trophy of his kill. He wanted

to scalp him, or take his head and have it cured so that he might

preserve this moment for ever, but before he could move, there was the

shrilling of whistles, and a bugle began urgently to sound the

advance.

On the slope ahead of them, only the dead lay in their piles and

mounds, while the last of those who had survived that crazy suicidal

charge were disappearing like wisps of smoke back among the rocks.

The road to Sardi was open, and like the hard professional he was,

Luigi Castelani seized the chance. As the bugle sang its brassy

command, the Italian infantry rose from the trenches, and the formation

of tanks rumbled forward.

The corpse of the ancient Harari warrior lay directly in the track of

the command tank, and the rumbling steel treads pressed it into the

rocky ground as it passed over, squashing it like the carcass of a

rabbit on a highway, as it bore Colonel Count Aldo Belli triumphantly

up the gorge to Sardi and the Dessie road.

At the wall of rock built right across the throat of the gorge, the

armoured column ground to a halt, blocked at the very lip of the

valley, and when the Italian infantry, who had moved under cover of the

black steel hulls, swarmed out to tear the wall down, they met another

wave of Ethiopian defenders who rose from where they had been lying

behind the wall, and immediately attackers and defenders had become so

entwined in a single struggling mass that the artillery and machine

guns could not fire for fear of gunning down their own.

Three times during the morning the infantry had been thrown back from

the wall, and the heavy artillery barrage that they had directed

against it made no impression on the granite boulders. When the tanks

came clanking and squealing like great black beetles hunting for a

breach, there was none, and the trace had clawed sparks from the rock

but been unable to lift the great weight of steel at the acute angle

necessary to climb the wall.

Now there was a lull that had lasted almost half an hour, and

Gareth and Jake sat shoulder to shoulder, leaning against one of the

massive granite blocks. Both of them were staring upwards at the

sky,

and it was Jake who broke the silence.

"There is the blue." They saw it through the last eddying banks of

cloud that still clung like the white arms of a lover to the shoulder

of the mountain, but were slowly smeared away by the fresh dry breeze

off the desert.

A ray of brilliant sunlight burst into the valley, and threw a rainbow

of vivid colour in a mighty arc from mountain to mountain.

"That's beautiful," murmured Gareth Softly, staring upwards.

Jake drew the watch from his pocket, and glanced at the dial.

"Seven minutes past eleven." He read the hands. "Just about right now

they'll radio them that the clouds are open.

They'll be sitting in the cockpits, eager as fighting cocks." He

patted the watch back into his pocket. "In just thirty-five minutes

they'll be here." Gareth straightened up and pushed the lank blond